PayPal has become the latest leading payments service provider to step up its use of artificial intelligence in its unveiling of six new features.
The products have been developed in collaboration with Vemmo and are currently being piloted with plans to fully take to market later this year. PayPal has identified personalisation for both merchants and consumers as being its primary goal.
In its statement announcing the six new products, PayPal detailed some of the key motivations behind the developments. Factors cited include stretched consumer budgets and a desire for greater value among said consumers.
The San Jose-based fintech, one of the largest US corporations in terms of revenue and a leading payments provider globally, added that merchants need ‘new, advanced ways to speed consumer through checkout’ in a highly competitive, £6trn-valued e-commence market.
“PayPal is on a mission to revolutionise commerce, globally, and today we are starting the next chapter,” said Alex Chriss, President and CEO of PayPal.
“With nearly 400 million consumer accounts, and 35 million merchant accounts, PayPal handles transactions for about a quarter of the world’s e-commerce transactions each year, but more importantly, shoppers trust PayPal to power their payments.”
The primary objective of the six products is, as Chriss explained, to speed up the payments and checkout process for customers. The new features are as follows:
- Fastline – a ‘faster and smarter’ checkout experience
- Smart Receipts – AI personalised recommendations for customers
- PayPal advanced offers – personalised, real-time offers to customers
- A ‘reinvented’ PayPal consumer app with new cashback features
- Vemmo’s ‘enhanced business profiles, designed to assist SMEs to find and engage new customers
PayPal’s further integration of AI marks the continuation of a long-running and continuing trend which has seen fintechs and payments firms explore how the technology can be utilised to enhance the customer experience and grow businesses.
This is nothing new for the financial sector, which has long used the technology to assist with day-to-day basics of fiscal business, such as risk assessment.
With AI exploding into the headlines and mainstream last year, such as through the widespread use of Chat GPT, it is clear that stakeholders across the payments space are looking to up their game when it comes to leveraging the rapidly developing technology.
Chriss continued: “PayPal is introducing six new innovations that will not only solve real customer pain points, but we believe will change the world of payments and commerce.
“From new solutions for merchants to speed up checkout and personalise offers, to a new consumer app that will give our loyal customers more reasons to shop with PayPal, to the next generation of Venmo designed to be the growth platform for local small businesses, PayPal has always brought the future of money to our consumers and merchants and today marks the next revolution.”
